Miss Veedol

This monument in Misawa commemorates the flight of Miss Veedol.

The Miss Veedol was the first airplane to fly non-stop across the Pacific Ocean.

On October 5, 1931, Clyde Pangborn with co-pilot Hugh Herndon crash-landed their plane, the Miss Veedol, in the hills of Wenatchee, Washington, in the central part of the state. and they became the first men to fly non-stop across the northern Pacific Ocean. The 41 hour flight from Sabishiro Beach, Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, Japan won them the 1931 Harmon Trophy, symbolizing the greatest achievement in flight for that year.

Miss Veedol was a 1931 Bellanca Skyrocket J-300 Long-Distance Special. The Miss Veedol could carry 800 gallons of fuel. Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon modified Miss Veedol while being held in Japan - on unfounded suspicions of spying - to be able to carry more fuel, and to be able to jettison their landing gear. The Miss Veedol carried an initial load of 950 gallons of aviation gasoline on her record-breaking flight.

Herndon and Pangborn had been trying to set a speed record for a round-the-world flight, but while in Japan, they received news that a new and insuperable (by them) record had already been accomplished. Looking for a worthwhile aviation record to set, they decided to modify Miss Veedol to make a non-stop trans-Pacific flight.

Upon reaching the Pacific Northwest, they found that the weather was cloudy/rainy over most of the area. Upon scouting out several possible airfields in Washington and Oregon for landing - and finding them "socked in" by bad weather - Herndon decided that conditions would be better near his home town of Wenatchee, which is in a dry area of central Washington. When they got there, they had to make a belly-landing, of course, because they had disposed of Miss Veedol's landing gear over the western Pacific. She was damaged, but repairable, and her propeller was wrecked, but Herndon and Pangborn came through the landing all right.

One would think that an airplane that made such a historic first flight would deserve to be preserved, but this is not so. Pangborn and Herndon shortly sold their plane to an Italian physician/pilot who used her for personal travel. On a flight in the 1930s, he and Miss Veedol disappeared on a flight over the Bay of Biscay, without a trace. Presumably, the remains of Miss Veedol have lain on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean ever since then.

Since there was an American brand of lubricating motor oil named "Veedol" back then, there seems to be some connection and Miss Veedol was named for that. It is unclear as to whether the Veedol company partially sponsored the aviation endeavors of Herndon & Pangborn.

Miss Vedol was later sold to a group of backers including one Dr. Leon Pisculli, who recruited pilot William Ulbrich and copilot Gladys Wilner for a record New York to Rome flight. Plans for the flight included a flyover of Florence, Italy, where Wilner was to parachute to the ground in honor of Florence Nightingale, as Wilner was a pilot, a nurse, and a parachute jumper (apparently the only such woman then in existence.) After Wilner dropped the project, a dancer Edna Newcomber replaced her. The Miss Vedol, renamed the American Nurse, departed Floyd Bennett Field for Rome in June, 1932. It was never heard from again.

As of 2008, Gladys Wilner, aged 98, survives, the only living person to have ever flown in Miss Vedol (as the American Nurse).

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